Last week I attended an impressive European startup competition. The prize was not a cheque, but an opportunity: access to Madrid City Council. A few years ago, the award would have seemed a perverse incentive for startup founders, but entrepreneurs are waking up to the public sector as a multi-billion pound opportunity. Equally, some governments, tired of expensive, multi-year contracts with software giants are looking to startups for new ideas. This mutual curiosity is fostering the emergence of a global government technology, or govtech sector.
The promises of govtech are a technocrat's dream. The sector aims to boost public sector productivity and maximize efficiency in public service provision, from public transportation (like Citymapper) to welfare payments (like Govcoin). Even as govtech still evades a single definition – focused only on public service provision for some, and addressing all the ways that government can be assisted by innovative tech for others – this core mission is broadly accepted. It's a feature that distinguishes govtech from civic tech, which primarily seeks citizen engagement and social impact (although they can overlap). As the social entrepreneur Andrew Rasiej explains, govtech "may not be for the public good depending upon who's in power."
Even in democratic contexts, innovations designed to make the public sector more efficient do not, by default, deepen the quality of democracy. Efficiency and democracy can make uneasy bedfellows, with expert-designed systems often squeezing out space for democratic deliberation or oversight. Aadhaar, India's biometric ID system has rationalised aspects of public service provision. It has also raised major concerns over privacy, inclusion, and lack of democratic scrutiny. The project has nonetheless been internationally feted because of its efficiency gains.
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As govtech grows in Europe, accountability will be key for both government stability and the sustainability of the sector. A crisis of trust in governance institutions has long been brewing across democracies. We may also be at the dawn of a "techlash". Govtech emerges at the convergence point of this double dip in public confidence. As govtech companies gain power, they can help to rehabilitate citizens' trust, for example by reducing fraud.
But a lack of accountability – answerability and respect for societal values – could intensify the crisis. It may actually impede delivering efficiency and innovation, which is better served by trust-based legitimacy, and push citizens further towards anti-system options.
To mitigate this risk, we should settle on a definition of Govtech as intrinsically a dual-purpose sector - efficiency boosting and accountability boosting - and evaluate individual govtech ventures against both those criteria.
Public discussion of efficiency as a necessary but insufficient social gain of public-private technology partnerships is slowly emerging, albeit focused on tech giants. Palantir, the data analytics behemoth with major government contracts, has sparked protests over its seeming disregard for civil liberties. But we should also pay attention to startups with high-growth potential working with the public sector. The UK Government hopes to award 33 per cent of its spend to SMEs by 2020. Many govtech startups aspire to significant growth, an ambition that the government actively supports via its recently announced Govtech Catalyst Scheme. Attentiveness to accountability now can help to ensure that an emerging generation of govtech companies, handling citizens' data from day one, induces trust rather than suspicion.
Government has a crucial role to play. At the most basic level, and as Baroness Martha Lane Fox urges, political leaders and policy-makers must equip themselves with sufficient digital understanding to make considered decisions about public-sector technology uptake. In the UK context, as the DCMS assumes responsibility for data, and assumes leadership of the new Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, it can set clear parameters for data usage by startups working with government, beyond GDPR.
But government should not be left to do the work alone. Govtech incubators, investors, and founders must contribute to shaping sector standards, as some already are, including through sound data use and client choice. How will entrepreneurs select clients in a global govtech market valued at over $1 trillion annually that includes many non-democracies and weak democracies? How will investors influence those choices?
Universities, often incubators of entrepreneurship, must also encourage accountability. Business schools developing govtech curricula should equip students - potential govtech entrepreneurs - to understand the broader societal implications of the sector. Public policy scholars can develop evidence bases for policy decisions and parse the politics of digitising government. We are engaged in this work at the newly-founded Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge.
Govtech is still in gestation, but it is developing quickly. If the sector can settle on an identity as mission-oriented towards efficiency and democratic accountability, then I'm confident that it can be a sustainable channel both for productivity gains and remaking citizens' satisfaction and trust in government. But we have no reason to assume that the sector will develop that way organically. As internet giants' struggles to comply with GDPR show, the shape of a tech sector can be highly path dependent, and reactively reforming them to work better for citizens is onerous for everyone. If we want govtech to fortify democracy, we must build it that way while we have the chance.
Tanya Filer is research associate in public policy and policy engagement at the Bennett Institute at the University of Cambridge.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
